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by Shaun Lawton

The word robot traces back to the Czech word robotnik, meaning 'slave', from
robota "forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery."  The English translation
of author Karel Capek's play "R.U.R." ("Rossum's Universal Robots") shortened
that to "robot"; which may be traced further back to Old Church Slavonic robota, or 
"servitude," so we can all see with no uncertainty that the implementation 
of robots to serve mankind would be nothing short of slavery, in and of itself. 

This should be perfectly clear to anyone who even has a remote understanding
of robotics and what it means to us as the master human race.   We're still
arguing whether or not we have a soul for crying out loud.  Does sentience
qualify one for discrimination?  That is a doomed argument, I am happy to say.

For example, if one were to raze forests for wood pulp from which to manufacture
paper that is used to bind books which are distributed uniformly about the land
in order to facilitate every individual user's needs in the area of information and
help them adjust towards a better understanding of their environment and place
in the whole of creation, that is all very well and good—except for the small matter
of displacing critical members of the ecology to the point of possibly compromising
our own existence—then it is understood, in a larger context, to pay respect to the
overall consequences and rectify matters by modifying certain aspects of the production
of books in order that the business of making them continues by virtue of a renewable resource.  In this regard, it is possible to compute the necessary minerals and compounds 
for the construction, manufacturing, and distribution of robots in our modern society,
and factor the sum impact that every consequential aspect of the process amounts to. 

As for the long held theory of the possibilities for simulations of artificial consciousness
goes, again my main point is that perhaps we should think twice before making any
aspect of consciousness (such as sentience, for example) markers that define boundaries
for what gets to enjoy certain rights.   If a rock is a necessary aspect of the overall
ecological picture (and in most cases, it is) then caution and care must be factored into
any endeavors which strive to carry out the wholesale destruction of rocks, lest we
suffer the unforeseen consequences of our rash advances against nature.  

And that is the main issue, here.  We need to keep ourselves attuned and go with Nature.
In a sense, we need to extend the boundaries of equality to include everything without exception.  The unknown is connected to everything, it is the root of all things known. 
From a seed which emerged from negative existence into our current static existence,
the tree of life was grown which continues to harbor us to this day and remains one
single entity who broke apart into so many clones of itself for so long that its latest offspring of generations have come to believe they are somehow separate from the One Tree and that even all of the trees today are separate from themselves, if you could possibly begin to imagine such a thing. 

The idea of an artificial humanoid not even being granted the permission to pretend it is sentient should be an utterly repellant one for us.  The more complicated our programming of the successive generations of rapidly improving robotics systems becomes, the more we will necessarily have to allow for a modicum of "sentience simulation" in order to carry across the complex commands and executions expected from such sophisticated machines. 

The dawning realization that the bipedal hominid form happens to be the optimal configuration for any advanced consciousness or simulation of such should be enough evidence in and of itself to lend a chill down the spines of the ones thinking about it.  

It's not a question of do robots have a consciousness, nor is it a question of do human beings have a soul.  It is entirely a matter of these questions being quintessentially moot points which should long ago have been discarded as so much "besides the point" as to essentially serve as a distraction from the more pressing real issues demanding our attentions.  These questions have been nullified as meaningless.  File under A for Absurd.

All Creation lies under the sanctity of sharing Equal Rights due to It All Being One Thing. 

Until humanity gets this concept firmly planted and having taken true root in its consciousness—that absolutely everything in existence without exception is essential and should be respected as such—then I'm afraid we may be typified as a species whose adolescence is not even close to being over.